Elevating Green, Lowering CostsIn the global movement toward greening the supply chain, much of the focus in warehousing has been on actual building systems. However, lift trucks use substantial energy and provide significant opportunities for savings. Find out how a review of consumption cost projections can help lead to energy-saving innovations and lower costs.

The Tales Lift Trucks TellAn enterprise fleet management solution is giving lift truck owners tangible benefits in time savings, lower maintenance and operating costs, fewer vehicle impacts and more pallets moved per hour. A large operation may be faced with collecting and analyzing data from tens to hundreds of trucks of various makes across a few or many facilities. With a fleet and warehouse optimization system, managers can monitor and report on vehicle and operator data – and even control performance parameters – from a computer or mobile device.

Protecting the Power SourceThe iBATTERY™ battery management system gives lift truck owners unprecedented power to monitor real-time battery condition and make decisions that optimize battery life and performance. Reduce your cost of ownership and ensure your batteries and forklifts are operating at peak efficiency with this unique battery management system. Access real-time battery data from your computer or mobile device through the unique, single view web portal – the iWAREHOUSE GATEWAY.

During this Webcast you'll learn how the latest generation of robotics systems, which incorporate vision, mobility, autonomous navigation, complex manipulation and motion control, can be used in a wide variety of appliations such as picking, placing, order fulfillment, palletizing, depalletizing, loading, unloading and many other areas.

We don’t make the product, we make the product better

By Bob Trebilcock, Executive Editor
April 29, 2011 - MMH Editorial

You’ve probably seen the BASF commercials. We don’t make the products you buy, we make the products you buy better.

The other day I spoke to Doug LeRoy and Jim Toscano, two managers from Lord Corporation, a company that I’ve come to think of as one of the BASF’s of the lift truck industry. They don’t make lift trucks; they make the lift trucks you buy better.

Specifically, they make steer by wire systems. My initial thought when I got a call from them was that they were talking about wire-guided automatic guided vehicles – the kind where the AGV is guided by a wire in the floor. Turns out, steer by wire is a system for electronic steering rather than hydraulic steering.

Instead of a steering system that is powered by hydraulic pumps and motors, a steer by wire system relies on an electric current to guide the steering mechanism. Here’s how it works.

In a lift truck, the steering wheel is connected to a shaft that’s supported by bearings. Within the bearing housing, there’s sensing element that takes input from the steering wheel, for instance whether the operator is turning the wheel clockwise or counterclockwise. It could also include the speed at which the driver is turning the wheel or how fast the wheel is turning.

A rotor, or disk, is attached to the shaft. The rotor floats in self-contained magnetic material. That periphery unit is surrounded by a coil of electric wire. Finally, the system includes a computer that talks to an actuator, or electric motor that positions the steering wheel. When you put it all together, the computer runs all those inputs through an algorithm. The result is a command that’s sent to the magnetic field to determine the torque that’s applied to steering wheel shaft. “The signal from the actuator changes the magnetic field by changing the electric current going to the device,” LeRoy said. “That changes the amount of resistance your hand feels in the steering system.” It’s a fancy way of saying that the system determines the precision of steering, depending on the situation.

While that all sounds pretty sophisticated for a lift truck, LeRoy explained that its critical in some of the applications lift trucks are working in today. “If your operator is putting away a pallet in a very narrow aisle rack, you want precise control,” he says. “If an operator is moving a heavy load across a long distance, the additional control allows them to travel faster on a machine. That allows them to get more productivity out of a shift.”

A steer by wire vehicle is also easier to turn, which makes it more ergonomically friendly, which may be a plus as the demographics of the workforce change. “We have more women operators and we have aging operators,” LeRoy said.

At the end of the conversation, I asked LeRoy and Toscano if steer by wire was an option that I add to a lift truck or choose over another type of steering system. They said no: It’s either on a truck and part of the purchase price, or it’s not on at all. Sort of like BASF – if it’s there, it makes the product better.

About the Author

Bob TrebilcockExecutive Editor

Bob Trebilcock, executive editor, has covered materials handling, technology and supply chain topics for Modern Materials Handling since 1984. More recently, Trebilcock became editorial director of Supply Chain Management Review. A graduate of Bowling Green State University, Trebilcock lives in Keene, NH. He can be reached at 603-357-0484.

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